The ability to direct specific advertisements to subscribers of entertainment programming and subscribers of on-line services is dependent on identifying their product preferences and demographics. A number of techniques are being developed to identify subscriber characteristics, as discussed in co-pending U.S. application Ser. No. 09/205,653, entitled xe2x80x9cClient-Server Based Subscriber Characterization Systemxe2x80x9d.
Even when subscriber characterizations can be performed, it is often the case that the television/set-top or personal computer that is receiving the programming is used by several members of a household. Within the television/set-top equipment or personal computer there exist an Electronic Program Guide (EPG). The EPG is typically a navigational tool, which contains source related information including but not limited to the programming category, program description, rating, actors, and duration. The structure and content of EPG data is described in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 5,596,373 assigned to Sony Corporation and Sony Electronics, which is herein incorporated by reference. Given that these members of the household can have very different demographic characteristics and product preferences, it is important to be able to identify which subscriber is utilizing the EPG system. Additionally, it would be useful to be able to utilize previous characterizations of a subscriber, once that subscriber is identified from a group of subscribers.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a subscriber identification system, which can identify a subscriber in a household or business and retrieve previous characterizations based upon their EPG activities.
The present invention encompasses a system for identifying a particular subscriber from a household or business.
The present invention encompasses a method and apparatus for identifying a subscriber based on their particular Electronic Program Guide (EPG) activities. These activities may include scrolling, paging, and information screen viewing habits as well as but not limited to their method and frequency of EPG activation. As a subscriber activates the EPG or scrolls or pages through, and views program and channel information, the sequence of actions performed and the programs selected are recorded and analyzed. The actual set up of the EPG and the manner of how EPG was activated, i.e., whether a remote control device or a button on the set-top was used may also be analyzed. Additionally, the rate of scrolling, paging and screen viewing may also be analyzed and recorded, i.e., an adult in the household may scroll through the information faster than a child, thus, by analyzing the scrolling rate it may be determined whether the viewer is an adult or a child. In one embodiment, the EPG related information is computed for a predetermined time (a session), and the collected information is used to form a session data vector which can be used by a neural network to identify the subscriber based on recognition of the related subscriber characteristics based on previous sessions. These subscriber characteristics may then be used to target advertising/entertaining programming at different subscribers.
In an alternate embodiment, the EPG related actions that the subscriber is executing, or measurements associated with the action, are mined to produce statistical information regarding the program selection including the demographics of the target audience and the type of actions being executed. This program related information is also included in the session data vector and is used to identify the subscriber.
In one embodiment, the EPG related data is processed using a Fourier transform to obtain a signature for each session profile wherein the session profile comprises a probabilistic determination of the subscriber demographic data and the program characteristics. In this embodiment, a classification system is used to cluster the session profiles wherein the classification system groups the session profiles having highly correlated signatures and wherein a group of session profiles is associated with a common identifier derived from the signatures.
In another embodiment, the system identifies a subscriber by correlating a processed version of the EPG related data with the common identifiers of the subscriber profiles stored in the system.